Harvard professor James Wood will explore “The New Atheism and the Modern Novel” when he gives the Steiner Lecture at St. John’s College. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium on Friday, January 11, at 8 p.m.

Wood describes his lecture as “an examination of the current impassioned and often wrong-headed arguments between religious believers and atheists, and a discussion of the modern novel’s role – both actual and potential – in representing the true dramas of belief and unbelief in our age.”

Wood is a professor of the practice of literary criticism at Harvard University as well as a staff writer and book critic at the New Yorker magazine. His critical essays have been published in three collections: “The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief,” “The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel,” and “The Fun Stuff.” He is also the author of a novel, “The Book Against God,” and explores elements of story in another book, “How Fiction Works.”

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